"Any growth towards which you admire must be by your own will, in your own time, and for your own sake."

“There is power in failure. There is power and purpose in every moment of our lives and failures and successes. There is a purpose behind it all. No matter how many fears or worries you might have, things will work out if you have faith and you believe. So continue to press on.”

“It was my mistake. I thought that you were starting to get bored of me because you were finally seeing me in the clear light, that I’m not the perfect girl you thought I was. You began to see flaws and insecurities and annoyance. Baggage… baggage that you didn’t think would occur when you first sought after me.

But yes, I wasn’t confidently that I would be able to hold you any longer; before you realized that I am nothing near what you need or want. You made me feel ashamed for loving and keeping such a wonderful person like you when you can do so much better. It’s like putting unnecessarily pressure on someone to run the same pace as you in a marathon when you know they can place first. I felt like I couldn’t keep up and guilt overwhelmed me… you overwhelmed me, you still do. We are so similar, yet we, ourselves, understand each other the least.

And unknowingly, when you claimed things that I felt were too good to come true for me, I felt unworthy. things began to fall apart and I kept on searching and searching for that same, meaningless, desperate reassurance … to remind me and most importantly, hoping to remind you … the girl you fell in love with.”

He came up to me and asked if I was a medical student. I replied, “No, I recently graduated from a post bac program here.” “Oh, I’m applying to that. Do you think I’ll get in?” GPA: 3.6 MCAT: 19 Physical Sciences: 8, Verbal = 3, Biology = 8 College: Never heard of. Probably insignificant. “Do you think you could put in a good word for me?” I didn’t know who he was, where he came from, or how he grew up. By physical appearances, he was black by race and didn’t seem native by tongue. But I realized something important today. If I was a medical admissions officer, would I give him a chance at my school? Honestly, I don’t know anything about him, except these numbers. And in a world of constant comparisons, I wouldn’t…couldn’t put in a good word for him simply because he asked me to. Recommendations out. Does he deserve a chance? I don’t know. Objectively, he probably doesn’t have a shot if he doesn’t get his MCAT up. This is how reality works, so as I apply through the upcoming cycle for medical schools, I should remind myself not to get boggled down by the amount of rejections I will receive. Personally though, I feel for him. I know where he is and how much he thinks he probably wants it. I know because I know of someone like him. I hope it shows through to somebody.

The winter months have always been terribly ill-treating. The weather does not help and the people don’t get better. I’ve gone from anticipating the beginning of a new journey to dreading the end of an unfinished chapter. I can’t remember the last time that I haven’t been unaware in these last few weeks for the past couple of years.

I’ll subconsciously think to myself, “I’m not done, I need to go back and fix it. This isn’t what I wanted.”

Why do I never get what I want? Why does the end never turn out how I imagined? What am I doing wrong? Again and again?

This semester landed on a heartbreaking note. The graduate program I am currently enrolled in lashed me in the face. I was one letter grade away from my goal and that was taken away from me. Six questions. All it took.

I’ve forgotten what it feels like to live with purpose and meaning. Every time I lose inspiration and motivation, I go back to the place that once brought me the most of these two – Ferguson. When did I lost it? Did I have it before? I think I’ve been trying to seek it all my life, and in doing so, I got myself somewhere only to lose a piece of myself. There has been multiple occasions where I’ve incorporated another identity, persona, to find what I lack and so hopefully desire. Knowledge. Culture. Respect. Exercise. Charisma. What makes me so empty when I have what people define as “so much”?

What has always been most fulfilling to me is being able to help people, but I need to do that for me first. I have intensely gone through Ferguson’s blog, and in search, I find words that I want to express and actively make known. I can’t though, I admit, I don’t know how. I have communication issues and writing makes me squeezy. Speaking makes me weak. I’m afraid I’ll say it wrong, that it’s not what I mean. Ferguson lays it down perfectly for me, so elegantly and beautifully thought out. “Yes! This is what I wanted to say, this is how I meant it, this is what you should understand about me,” are the words that flood my head as I go through his writing.

But I don’t want to get there with his terms. I don’t want to live in his shadow and find inspiration through his mind. But I can’t give it up because I’m not in a good place. Somewhere, sometime, I’ve forgotten how to write, speak, . . . and live. I’ve never actually known. This is where I am and don’t want to be any longer. How though? That’s always the question.

1. Happiness is your responsibility. Do not hand it over to others.
2. Take initiative. Life will not fall into your hands if you don’t do anything about it.
3. Refuse to count on luck and do not attribute events to luck.
4. Be humble. Do not gloat intentionally. Your success is defined by you and not other people’s opinions.
5. A terrible, horrifying, sad, or boring experience is better than no experience. You’ll be stronger and smarter.
6. Do not allow yourself to be tied down to others. Their choices should not affect yours.
7. Use reason. Your faults and mistakes define you, but they are also yours to change.
8. Bitterness and holding grudges kill more dreams than you realize. Let go and move forward.
9. Work hard. And then harder. Continue. Thrive.
10. Learn what it means to take perspective. It is the most important discovery.

In Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Basil Hallward said to his friend Lord Henry Wotton “You like everyone; that is to say, you are indifferent to everyone.”

Stumbling upon this in an international blog, the author quoted this particular statement, followed by the comment- “Love, it seemed, was not above context but required context. To love everyone or everything was to misappropriate the emotion entirely.”

NH is hardly similar to Wotton, more so to Hallward, and so it only seems ironic to compare him to Wotton by this very remark. However, it is entirely, in its entity, true even in Hallward with regards to his obsession of physical beauty. NH is easily appealed to the appearance of world’s “beauty” and that to him, paints him an idealistic image of how he could contribute all the good he has to offer. He is amazingly wonderful, but also readily persuaded with randomness when it comes to an appreciation for love that drastically differs from mine. Whether it is my inner sensitivity or Disney beliefs, I would like to think that most people would want someone with a sense of stubbornness in who they choose as their lover. He, on the other hand, is casual.

How casual may you ask? Casual enough to bother me frequently and act on it. Casual enough that he would form a love connection with someone who didn’t suit him in any manner. Casual enough to plan a marriage with someone that his gut knew he would eventually depart from. Casual enough to assume an illusion of love is love, more specifically to interpret love as people who planted seeds of necessity in him. Casual enough to rebound from relationship after relationship in short periods without prior foundation, and claims to “love” every time with every girl.

How can one not generate a sense of futility after a break up if love was the product during that time? How does one not hurt, ache, with the desire to regain completeness only accomplished by the one who left in the first place? How does one learn to love again without realizing how it was misinterpreted, leading to its demise? How does one meet righteous love consecutively?

The answer is, you can’t, you don’t, you shouldn’t. And if you do, love no longer holds value. To say you love is unfair to those who love wholeheartedly, timelessly, unwaveringly.

~People may fall in love easily, but they should not fall in love casually. Casual-ity is an injustice to true love.

I often find myself being extraordinarily cruel to the one person I was always told to love- me. In reaction, I end up being cruel to others around me, filling their minds with repetitive concerns that I’ve committed an unneeded importance to. Honestly, there is nothing to gain except an unyielding pile of words that admits, confirms, or denies. There were younger days when I used to believe that the one for me would encounter all these spiteful attacks as relentless trials of conquer. I, now, continuously lie between the lines of always losing the war or picking at lost battles. I don’t fight valiantly, for I will always be discreetly armed in the stake of self-security.

On evening of 2014 Independence Day, I met a persistent admirer that in face of emotional devastation was willing to take a possible destructive path with me. “He’s foolish,” I thought. “No one could handle this.” Little did I know, my “this” wasn’t all that spectacular. We’ll call him, for serious purpose, NH instead of its actual denotation of Noodlehead.

NH has had partners with bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety; some were alpha females, obsessive-compulsive, perfectly average, smart, and all were (are) meaningful to him. I have subtly hinted if there were outliers in his net counting of 6, the answer was unclear. In my case, I have had two.

In the last three years, my experience with love and lust revolved exclusively around two people- my first boyfriend whom I loved, and Ferguson whom I lusted after. I have been cruel to NH in the sense that I have placed my ideas of what I know or think I know from my relationships in comparison to his past. What I’ve been actually looking for is meaning. What do I mean to him if we invented a scale comprised of all factors involved in this idea of affection towards strangers? Could we standardize it to make it fair? If I could compartmentalize what I’ve learned and how significant each one was, why couldn’t he?

My worries stem from the fact that NH is absolutely too caring for everyone that remotely plays a part in his random partakes. His frequent ability to fall in love, to gather a sense of happiness with devotion to women, detracts me from him. I didn’t think that one simple, single characteristic would have me crawling back to self torture, in effect tormenting us to sustain vows that we may not be able to fulfill at the moment. I wonder, and analyze and scrutinize how we differ in the way we value true love and how this may affect us.

In retrospect, there is an evil variable called time that misconstrues our feelings, our memories, our way to process the same experiences, making it difficult to realize how much meaning one held when that era has passed. Granted, we aren’t the same person, nor have we stayed static as our lives moved ahead. We have changed and the person that we want to spend the rest of our lives with has too. So why have I been so cruel and allow the past to haunt me, even to the extent of guiding me away from what I believe will be, a phenomenal journey with someone who, for once, deserves everything that I am, and accepts everything that I am not?